Sen. Webb's Aide Arrested on Gun Charge

Phillip Thompson, an aide to Virginia's Democratic Senator Jim Webb, was arrested today for bringing a semiautomatic, 9 millimeter pistol and two magazines through security at the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. Thompson faces felony charges of carrying a pistol without a license and possessing an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition.

Another Congressional official briefed on the case said the aide had told the authorities that Mr. Webb gave him the pistol while being dropped at the airport and that he inadvertently took it to the Capitol complex.

Webb gave him the gun? He inadvertantly took it through security? There has to be more to this story.

"a young black man and his friends brought unlicenced, unregistered guns and illegal ammunition to the dirkson building today; security officials (fill in your own conclusion).

my point is that i wouldn't even think of bringing illegal weapons to a government building. no more than i would try to bring a bomb, or drugs. it's unthinkable for normal people. but webb and his aide are just confident as can be that it's ok for them to pass guns around like lighters.

There are a lot of dumb things that people do without thinking. The USA has the highest incarceration rate of the civilized world, perhaps the world as a whole. What are we doing incarcerating people for carelessness?

If you must convict them, give them a day and mark them as an offender and let them go. It appears there are a lot of crimes people have been committing for which a day in jail and being marked as convicted is the appropriate penalty.

that's just felony stupidity. He should be fired at the very least. And Webb should answer for his wild west attitude. I'm no fan of the police state we live in. These people are either so scared, in which case they should find another profession, or they are stupid, in which case they should find another profession.

"I think this is one of those very unfortunate situations where, completely inadvertently, he took the weapon into the Senate yesterday," Webb added. The senator noted that he was in New Orleans from Friday until Monday. He speculated that the incident happened because three of his cars were moved because of the trip.